Fans & Clans

All of the thanks to goes to Carnius for a great mod, I am thankful that you are kind enough to make this for me and the rest of the CNC community, without caring about any kind of pay or reimbersment. I and, I believe the rest of the CNC community really just want to say, THANKS CARNIUS!
and thank you for coming to TEF.

In this tutorial I'll show you how to get new models in Tiberium Wars to play with.

First of all you can only use Max 7 or Max 9 to export your model to w3x file, in this tutorial i'm going to use Max 9, you can download Max 7 for free at Crymods.net , you need to register first before you can download Max 7. Again I'm using Max 9 so the screens in the tutorial could be different when you downloaded Max 7 but it will not be a problem. We also need a text editor you can use notepad but in this tutorial I'll use Notepad++ and Notepad.

This tutorial is made for people using Windows if you are using any other OS files could be in a different folder.

The model

Alright we can use any 3d modeling program to make the model for example sketchup by google or a newer version of 3DS Max if you are using a newer version of Max you cant save it as a .max file since the older versions cant read the new scripted format of .max, if you use a different model save them as .3ds or any other format that max 7 or max 9 can import. Alright then In this tutorial I'm going to use the Berseker from Gears of War, since this model is extracted from the pc game it self and texture's aswell I dont have to UVW Map the model and make a texture for it.

So here is the model with the diffuse texture wrapped on it, since Tiberium Wars use a Shader we need two more texture file's those are Normal and Spec texture's the Normal texture looks like a purple color texture for example like this.

And the spec map is a white/grey colored one.

Since its a pain in the ass to make these texture's your self we are going to use Crazybump now start Crazybump and click on "Click this button to start" then click on Open photograph from file.You'll get a pop-up screen select the texture you want and make a NRM and SPEC file and save them as .tga, its also possible to use .dds

To apply this texture's we need to select Material Editor in Max.

Alright then now we have selected Material Editor a small window pop-ups with small little balls on it,

when you have copy the files from the SDK map for Max 7 or Max 9 called 3DSMax9_Plugin/3DSMax7_Plugin you click on the button Standard if you havent then closemax and copy the files to your max installation folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk/3ds Max 9 / C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk/3ds Max 7" if you already did that that you wont need to close 3ds Max. When you selected "Standard" another window pop-up with various options to select we use DirectX Shader, select "Discard old material?" if you done it correctly you'll see the path to the Shader file, select the path then CnC3 and then ObjectsGDI.fx or any other option for your shader. Your material Editor screen will change, in the following options upload this file's Diffuse (the normal colored texture, in NRM the purple colored one, and in spec the grey/white/black one.

If you did it correctly your model will be lighted up you can change this by editing the Ambient Color, Diffuse Color and the Specular Color. If you are happy with how it turns out then export the model by selecting file > Export > W3X Make sure you export it as .w3x since this is the file format the game reads and not .w3d like in Generals.

Now go to the Mods folder "Electronic Arts\Command & Conquer 3\MOD SDK\Mods" create a new folder for you mod, since i'm going to ad the Berserker from Gears of War I'm going to name my mod Gears, now open your mod folder and make a new folder called data, now go back to Mods folder and select Samplemod > data and copy the mod.XML file to your mod data folder so in my case it would be Gears/data/

now make a new folder and name it Factions or Sides so its easier to find what you need, in that folder you make another folder for the faction your mod is, in my case it would be Locust because in Gears of War the human faction is called Gears and the alien race is called Locust. and to make it much more easier make 3 more folders called Air, Buildings, Land. in the land folder I'm going to make another folder called Berserker and in that folder I'm going to past my model and texture file's.

To load the texture's on the model for the W3X viewer and ingame we need to make 3 .xml file's since the model have a diffuse normal and specular map on it. To do this we need to ad this bit of text in the .xml file where going to make.

<+?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>REMINDER REMOVE THE PLUS SIGNS MODDB DOESNT LIKE HTML CODE SO I HAD TO DO IT LIKE THIS!!!

^^^This is how it need to look like!!!^^^

So your mod folder for your unit would have 7 files 1 .w3x 3.tga or .dds and 3 .xml file's.
alright now since we made our own root for the files "MOD SDK\Mods\Gears\data\Sides\Locust\Land\Berserker"
we need to edit the .w3x right click and select open with and then select notepad or notepad++ I'll use notepad++.

Now you see allot of random numbers and your like damm i'm going to close this window but hold on there are just small things you have to do at the
we need to delete ART:DONT change what is behind ART: my texture files begins with BRSKR, now we need to change all the " , " with dots and remember there could be thousand of them in here so just press CTRL + F then Replace, in the box Search for you type , and in replace yes you guess it right you place the . My version is dutch so the words are not the same but the tabs and options are.

Alright thenthis could take some time depends on how big your model is it will look like Notepad++ crash but this is normal because it is searching for thousands of , to replace with . "dots" when you done all the , are replace with dots and you'll have Include type="all" source="BRSKR_COLOR.xml" see screenshot.

Now go to the folder MOD SDK > CnC3XML and choose the faction your model is going to playable with I'm going with GDI and replace it with the Predator Tank so it will be MODSDK > CnC3XML > GDI > Units. Copy the .xml file of the building or unit you want to replace in my case GDIPredator.xml paste it in your mod folder Mods > Modname > data > Sides > Faction > Land, Air or Building depens on you for me it will be Mods > Gears > data > Sides > Locust > Land. Paste the .xml of your selected xml and rename it to your model name my will be then Berserker.xml, replace the first line for me the first line will be Art:GUPredTank_SKN.W3X and since we made our own root i have to change it to Berserker/BSRKR.w3x see screenshots.

Now to have it working we need to replace all of GuPredTank_SKN with BRSKR and in your case your model name dont place .w3x behind it. It could be that you get a message with that the file is read only rightclick the .xml file and uncheck the box read only. Now replace your .xml file in the folder what it is going to replace my case Land so my folder looks like this.

Now go back to your data folder of your mod and open mod.xml and delete everything in it, but keep this see screenshot.

now we need to ad a line of code to get our model with textures ingame, that will be
Include type="all" source="Sides/Locust/Land/Berserker.xml"/ with the arrows infront < and at the back > see screenshot of how it will look like.

alright then we have done all the coding, now its time to compile the mod. Go to MOD SDK and select EALAModStudio its the one with the Red Alert 3 Icon.

It could be that you need to run it as Administrator on your system I'm using Windows 7 and I have to run is a Administrator to run it.

Select your mod in the dropdown menu, my mod is Gears so I choose Gears and its the first release of my mod so my mod version will be 1.00 and with every release it will be changed to 1.02 1.45 for example. now just keep all check boxes checked and click Build Mod.

Let it built the mod this can take sometime, when done correctly it will say build completed build time taken.

close the modstudio place your Tiberium Wars cd in your computer and select your mod and launch it and see if the changes where applyed.

I hope this Tutorial give you a insight on how to get your models in Tiberium Wars, I wasn't able to make this tutorial without Madiba Helge and Jafhar they helped me out with this and I want to help you new modders with this tutorial so dont forget to say thanks to the guys and show us what you are creating.

pretty weird that i see this message just now. i wanted a long time ago to make my own mod but i missed very must all the tutorials to make one (i was capable to make my own units, but what the next step then?)

This is Totally where i was looking for! (maybe i will start again and see how far i come now)